Today, 22 June, the Coptic Church celebrates the feast of Mar-Mina (St Menas), the widely loved 3rd-century Egyptian saint and martyr. Watani marks the occasion by reviewing the work done by the Ministry of Antiquities and the Church to save the remains of his 4th-century tomb and the grand holy city that sprung at the site, now listed on UNESCO World Heritage in Danger. Egypt is working to have the site removed from that list, and listed as World Heritage Site instead.
In efforts to save the archaeological site of Abu-Mina, a 1000-feddan desert site that lies some 70km southwest Alexandria and that also includes the modern-day monastery of Mar-Mina, a project has been completed in the area to reduce underground water. The site had been placed on UNESCO’s World Heritage List in 1979, but was in 2001 moved to UNESCO World Heritage in Danger, owing to the detrimental effect of rising groundwater.
Mar-Mina (St Menas) is one of the most widely loved Christian saints in Egypt. He was an Egyptian military officer in the Roman army, and was martyred in AD309 for his Christian faith. The modern monastery, which stands close to his tomb at the site known as Abu-Mina, is a thriving pilgrimage site.
The archaeological remains at Abu-Mina were endangered by rising underground water on account of the irrigation of agricultural projects in the surrounding desert land. The underground water rose to fully submerge the saint’s tomb and inundate the early church and baptistry, also basilicas, public buildings, streets, monasteries, houses and workshops which had existed in the 4th-5th-century holy Christian city built around the tomb of Mar-Mina.
The martyr
An officer in Diocletian’s army, the young man who was to become St Menas was posted to Phrygia in Anatolia in what is today Turkey. Brought up as a Christian, he refused to participate in the massacre of Christians ordered by the emperor Diocletian in 303 and fled into the desert, where he lived devoutly for five years. But he believed he saw his fate revealed to him in a vision, and returned to face martyrdom. He was martyred in 309; his death was long drawn out and he endured great suffering. This was just a few years before the Emperor Constantine and his co-emperor in the East, Licinius, effectively legalised Christianity under the AD313 Edict of Milan.
Tradition says that the martyr’s followers intended to take his remains from Phrygia to Alexandria by ship, then along the caravan route to his birthplace at Pentapolis. While at sea, monsters with long necks emerged and tried to devour the body, but miraculous flames protected it and drove them back. Once at Alexandria, the saint’s remains were placed on camelback and the westward journey to Pentapolis started. At a spot southwest Alexandria the camel knelt and refused to move on, so this was taken to be Mar-Mina’s preordained burial site and there he was laid to rest.
Grand city
As time passed the burial site was forgotten till a local goatherd discovered that a sick goat made an extraordinary recovery after bathing and drinking from a spring at this spot. Word went out about the miraculous spring and other cures occurred, the most famous involving a princess who had suffered from a long sickness. The princess had a vision of St Menas asking her to dig in a certain nearby spot where she would find his body. The relics of the saint were dug out, and pilgrims began to flock to the shrine for the blessings of the saint and to drink the healing, miraculous water.
Not long afterwards a church was erected at the site which became a sacred place of pilgrimage.
Towards the end of the 4th century a cathedral was added and the site soon developed into a major centre for Christian worship. A town grew around the church to minister to the pilgrims, replete with hotels, bathhouses, and shops. At its zenith, the pilgrimage site was, after Rome, the largest pilgrim centre in the Roman Christian world. Apart from visiting the site on its own merit of holiness, pilgrims set to visit the Holy Land would make a stop at St Menas’s.
Pilgrims would take home tiny terracotta flacons, known as ampullae, stamped with an image of two kneeling camels and filled with holy water. These flasks were found all over the ancient world, confirming the shrine’s fame and importance; numerous specimens of them are displayed in many a far-flung museum.
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The prosperity was brought to a halt by the breakdown in law and order that followed the collapse of Roman rule in North Africa. Tribesmen overran the provinces and the church and its pilgrims fell victim to robbers, while the beautiful gardens of the old monastery were abandoned to the desert.
Modern monastery
By the 8th or 9th century, the town was completely destroyed although the basilica was left standing among the ruins and a handful of monks may have stayed on. It is not known what happened to Mar-Mina’s relics.
The site appears to have lain in oblivion till the 20th century when it was rediscovered and dug up.
Mina Badie Abdel-Malek, Professor of Mathematics and pundit of modern Coptic Church history, wrote to Watani that, during World War II, several miracles occurred with the Greeks in Egypt’s Western Desert close to St Menas’s burial site. The Greek Orthodox Church attributed these miracles to St Menas, so much so that they wrote their own icon of Mar-Mina, together with a document signed by the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Alexandria in 1942, reading: “… We are entitled to believe that his [St Menas] blessings contributed to the victory of the Allies and the crushing defeat of the Axis”.
The document is written in Greek and English, and is dated 11/11/1942. Accordingly, Dr Abdel-Malek says, there were then well-intentioned efforts by the Greek Orthodox Church to take over the premise of St Menas’s tomb, but these efforts were countered by a Coptic monk, Fr Mina al-Mutawahid, who insisted they were Coptic domain. In 1959, Fr Mina became the 116th Coptic Patriarch, Pope Kyrillos VI. Pope Kyrillos, who was famous for his love for Mar-Mina, had taken it upon himself to build a modern monastery close to the saint’s tomb; in November 1959 he laid the foundation stone of the modern monastery’s church 3km away from the tomb. Once the church was built, he moved to it part of the relics of Mar-Mina from the church consecrated in his name in Fom Al-Khaleeg, Cairo.
Pilgrimage site
At the outset of the 20th century, the Abu Mina archaeological site resurfaced when it was excavated by German archaeologist Carl Maria Kaufmann in 1905 – 1907. Not many remains of the original 4th-5th century city were standing, but the foundations of major buildings, such as the great basilica, were disclosed. The German expedition’s work was followed by expeditions of Alexandria’s Greco-Roman Museum in 1925 – 1929, Cairo’s Coptic Museum in 1951 -1952, and the German Archaeological Institute in Cairo since 1961 and ongoing.
Excavations uncovered a complete town so splendid; even the inns were faced with Italian marble. There were foundations of elegant houses, two bathhouses, water cisterns, and shops, all in the late Roman style typical of the 6th century. To the south lay two basilicas, the inns, and the square known as the Gathering Yard. Many of the finds from these excavations are displayed in the Coptic Museum in Cairo, but many others were taken to Germany.
According to Abdel-Rahim Rihan, General Manager of Research and Studies of South Sinai at the Ministry of Antiquities, the present archaeological site includes the remains of the outer walls that enclosed the town, and the north and west gates. Some streets were lined with columns, as was the courtyard which included souvenir shops behind the columns.
Excavations also unearthed the procession path, a wide and long route that extended from the inns to the gathering yard, and on to the churches in what was an architectural complex of individual churches. These either stood separately or were linked together and to the great 5th century basilica built by Pope Theophilos and the burial church built a century earlier by Pope Athanasius above the tomb of Mar-Mina west of the basilica. The tomb itself is underground, and was accessed by a staircase and exited by another, to accommodate the huge number of visitors.
Extending listed area
For its great historical significance, Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities conducted a project, in cooperation with the Coptic Church, to save Abu Mina’s from the groundwater threatening it, and move it back from UNESCO’s World Heritage in Danger to its World Heritage List.
Fr Thaddeus Ava-Mina, coordinator of relations between the Ministry of Antiquities and the Coptic Church, and responsible for Abu Mina site antiquities, told Watani: “The Egyptian government, represented by the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, has paid the entire cost of the project to save Abu Mina’s, which was carried out under its supervision. The Monastery of Mar-Mina worked side-by-side with the Ministry of Antiquities on following up, assisting, and overcoming all difficulties faced by the restorers and the project team, throughout the various phases of the project.”
In order to counter the rise in underground water, the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) started off by enlarging the listed area in hope of reducing the runoff from surrounding irrigation. The irrigation system in the fields, Fr Thaddeus explained, was changed from inundation to drip or sprinkler irrigation, and the water allotments for the fields in a 7,000 feddan area surrounding Abu Mina’s were accordingly set.
The project included digging trenches and wells, the first defence line against groundwater, also installing modern equipment to pump out and reduce that water. Maintenance work was done on the old buildings, fortifying their walls and re-installing loose or fallen architectural elements and bricks. Monitoring points were made to spot any changes that might take place as the groundwater was drawn. None did.
De-listing, re-listing
Minister of Tourism and Antiquities Khaled al-Anani paid a recent visit to Abu-Mina’s to check on the groundwater reduction project. He was accompanied by senior officials involved in the work.
Dr Anani stressed the significance with which the Ministry of Antiquities viewed the project, saying that a number of State institutions had joined hands to make the work a success. Top among them were Alexandria Governorate, the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation, and the Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation. The aim was, he said, to save Abu-Mina’s and reinstate it as a UNESCO Heritage Site.
For his part, Fr Thaddeus Ava Mina expressed his utmost appreciation of the close cooperation between the government and the Church in saving the historic site, and thanked Dr Anani for the effort exerted by the SCA in this regard.
The Minister’s aide for antiquities and museum projects, Hisham Samir, said that the Abu Mina project had started in 2019, auto financed by the SCA to the tune of EGP50 million. He said the project was completed and went into experimental operation in November 2021. The groundwater has been considerably reduced, he said, especially in Mar-Mina’s tomb.
Collaboration par excellence
Mr Samir explained that the project involved the digging of 12 wells around the tomb area, to depths of 35 – 50 metres; and 57 wells around the entire site. Pipes were extended along some 6150 metres to carry away the water; the wells and all electromechanical works were connected to a central control unit, and the groundwater level in the wells continuously monitored.
All studies to determine the best system to reduce the groundwater level, Mr Samir said, also the follow-up on the field work, had been done in collaboration with the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation, represented by its Research Institute for Groundwater and Drainage Research Institute.
The Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation, Mr Samir said, chimed in by changing the irrigation system in the fields neighbouring Abu Mina’s from inundation to drip irrigation, a pivotal element in reducing the agricultural runoff and hence the groundwater.
Regarding maintenance and restoration work of the old buildings, SCA’s Head of Islamic, Coptic, and Jewish Antiquities Osama Talaat said that all loose and scattered bricks and architectural elements have been reinstalled in the basilica, the tomb church, the tomb; and the western wall of the basilica has been installed. Ongoing, he said, are works of fine restoration of the walls of the great basilica and the friezes. The main entrance has been fully restored, he said, and the place cleaned of overgrown weeds.
Preparing for visitors
Minister Plenipotentiary Dalia Abdel-Fattah, General Supervisor of the Department of International Relations and Agreements at the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, spoke of approaching UNESCO to re-list Abu Mina as World Heritage. She said the Ministry submitted a detailed reported to UNESCO in February 2022 on the preservation of Abu Mina’s, citing the corrective measures taken. She said the Ministry requested that UNESCO would delegate a team to check on Abu Mina’s current situation, with view to de-listing it as an endangered site.
Meanwhile, work is being done by the Ministry to prepare Abu-Mina’s for receiving visitors. Eman Zidan, General Supervisor of Development of Antiquities Sites and Museums at the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, said that, in collaboration with Alexandria governorate, guideposts have been installed on the roads leading to the site. Paths are being paved on the site, also accessibility paths for persons with disabilities, and guideposts. In cooperation with UNESCO, the site is being provided with informational maps that include QR codes for details and film information.
In addition, Ms Zidan said, the site is being equipped with rest rooms, eco-friendly garbage bins, shaded benches, and a first aid station.
Watani International
22 June 2022